1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to attachments to rotary lawn mowers, riding lawn mowers, handheld leaf vacuums and other lawn care devices, and more particularly to an attachment to a lawn mower that collects and bags lawn debris.
2. Related Art
The present invention is an attachment for rotary lawn mowers, riding lawn mowers, leaf blowers/vacuums, and other lawn-care devices that have a debris discharge opening. The attachment includes a transfer tube that carries the lawn debris from the device discharge opening generally upward to a fill chute which directs the debris into the collector bag. The fill chute is flexible and air permeable, allowing the air carrying the debris to vent, yet is sufficiently enclosed to contain lawn debris. When used to collect fall leaves, the flexible fill chute can hold overfill leaves thereby allowing the collector bag to overfill. The operator of the lawn mower does not have to stop as often to either empty the bag or to tamp down the leaves into the bag. When the fill chute is sufficiently full, the operator stops mowing, removes the bag with fill chute attached, tamps the debris into the collector bag, and removes the fill chute. The filled bag is disposed of and an empty bag is placed in the attachment.
The attachment is optionally adjustable to at least two positions. In the fall, it can be adjusted to the collect leaves (CL) position that includes a larger collection bag and a higher positioning allowing the bag to be overfilled. In the spring and summer, the attachment is adjusted to the collect grass clipping (CG) position. This position includes a smaller, shorter collection bag for the more dense grass clippings. If a larger bag is filled with grass clippings, it becomes too heavy to be lifted and moved, so a smaller bag is used. The CG position also involves a lower positioning of the inlet adapter and transfer tube which improves the line of sight of the user while mowing, as well as easier filling of the bag and less clogging with dense fresh grass clippings.
Related art disclose attachments for a rotary lawn mower that include a top-filling collection bag for lawn waste. These devices typically have a tube that attaches upwardly the discharge outlet of a rotary lawn mower to an opening at the top of the collection bag. The debris falls into the bag and collects there. A venting system is used to vent the moving air that carries the debris upward. Some devices that fall into this general category are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,624,989, 3,708,968, 3,961,467, 4,941,231 and 5,983,613.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,484 discloses a collector that has a release air filter at the top of the collector bag. The '484 patent does not disclose a fill chute that is air permeable and can be overfilled to increase the volume of lawn debris that can be collected without stopping the mower. U.S. Pat. No. 4,233,806 uses a permeable bag to vent air in its lawn mower attachment, but the bag is not positioned to catch lawn debris and does not provide extra volume to overfill the collecting bag. Related art devices fail to provide the means to ventilate air and overfill the collector bag with a fill chute and teach away from the present invention by using other ventilation means. None of the cited references disclose a device that does what the present invention does.